Iranian Translation of the Prolapse and Incontinence Knowledge Questionnaire: Validity and Reliability

The Prolapse and Incontinence Knowledge Questionnaire (PIKQ) is a tool developed to assess patient knowledge regarding the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment of urinary incontinence (UI), and pelvic organ prolapse (POP) conditions. This study was aimed at translating the PIKQ into Persian and testing its validity and reliability.

The present descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in the women's clinics of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 2024, and included 205 women. The English PIKQ was translated into Persian using a standardized translation/back-translation method. The psychometric properties of the final version were tested for content validity, construct validity, and reliability. Construct validity was examined by confirmatory factor analysis. Reliability was assessed by test-retest reliability and the Kuder-Richardson Coefficient (KR-20).

The PIKQ demonstrated acceptable fit in a final model for both UI and POP. For PIKQ-UI, average variance extracted (AVE) was initially below 0.5, but after removing items 1, 5, 6, and 9, it improved to 0.5, confirming convergent validity. The final fit indices were acceptable (Chi-squared = 30.710, df = 20, goodness-of-fit index [GFI] = 0.970). For PIKQ-POP, items 11 and 4 were removed, resulting in an AVE of 0.5 and improved fit indices (Chi-squared = 34.645, df = 20, GFI = 0.976). However, to maintain the originality of the questionnaire, no changes were applied in the final version. Reliability was good, as indicated by the intraclass coefficients of 0.852 (0.627-0.942) for PIKQ-UI, and 0.646 (0.107-0.860) for PIKQ-POP. Also, KR-20 was 0.775 and 0.756 respectively.

The Iranian version of the PIKQ is a dependable and valid tool for evaluating knowledge related to UI and POP.